The Arbdot Spelling System

Alan Beale

August 30, 2005

Arbdot is an internationally-oriented spelling
system. This makes it more complicated than a system like Bobdot which is designed for
a single homogeneous dialect. (See here for a comparison of Arbdot and
Bobdot.) My strategy for describing Arbdot is first to describe
it as though the international elements did not exist, and then to
discuss the international complications.

Consonants

The consonants of Arbdot are for the most part unsurprising. The
digraphs ch, sh, tþ, th, wh and zh are used for the initial
sounds of chip, ship, thick, this, whip and the medial sound of
<vision>. The spelling wh is used even by those who
pronounce the words <which> and <witch> identically.
Occasionally, a digraph may form "accidentally", as in the words mïshäp, côrthous
and dâkshunt.
This is unfortunate, but is infrequent enough that it is not a
concern. Sh happens.

The k sound is spelled in Arbdot with the letter c before
an a, o or u, and with k anywhere else. However, words derived
from words ending in k retain the k, even when followed by an a, o or
u, as in myúzikal or wêrkout.

The sound of ng, as in <ring>, is written ng in the
final syllable of a word, and as ñ elsewhere. Examples: ring, strengtþ,
añzíetè, fiñger. A general
rule of Arbdot is that spelling does not change when one word is
derived from another and the pronunciation does not change. For
this reason, the words <singer> and <wrongly> are spelled singer and rônglè, not siñer and rôñlè as you
might expect. The sequence ñc/ñk, as in the words añcor and puñkchur, is spelled as nk,
omitting the tilde, in the last syllable of a word, as in tþink and jinks.

Long and short vowels and stress

For most vowels, the Arbdot spelling indicates whether the vowel is
stressed (either primarily or secondarily) or unstressed. There
are three exceptions. Vowels with a circumflex may be either
stressed or unstressed (but are usually stressed). As will be
seen, often when the first vowel of a word is both short and stressed,
the accent is omitted. And finally, in a compound word, stress is
shown for the components, not the word as a whole. This makes it
possible to easily spell a compound word even if the compounding
changes the stress of one of its components.

In Arbdot, a stressed short vowel is indicated by a
dieresis, a stressed long vowel by an acute accent, and an unstressed
long vowel by a grave accent. A vowel without an accent is either
an unstressed short vowel or a schwa. However, because it is not
possible for the first two syllables of a word to both be unstressed,
the dieresis is omitted from the first vowel of a word if the second
vowel is visibly unstressed (unmarked or marked with a grave
accent). Similarly, the dieresis is left out in a one-syllable
word containing a short vowel.

The schwa is spelled with the same vowel as in the
traditional spelling of a word, or with a u if there is no such
vowel. If the corresponding vowel is a digraph, one of the
letters is chosen.

There are a few other unstressed sounds besides the schwa that need
attention. The "indistinct i" sound is a sound which varies
between the schwa and the short i. Like the schwa, it is spelled
with the same vowel as in the traditional spelling, as in goblin, kíndnes and menas. Additionally, when a
distinct, unstressed i sound is traditionally spelled with an e, the e
is retained in Arbdot, as in desíd
and egzäkt.

The letter è is used for the sound of ending -y, as
in hapè and slólè. See International issues for further
discussion.

Note that the word "I" is a sight word, spelled without a
diacritic: I. This
special case is simply to mimic Bobdot.

Other vowels

The diphthongs of <how> and <joy> are spelled ou/ow and
oi/oy in Arbdot. The ou and oi forms are used before a consonant,
and the ow and oy forms are used at the end of a word or before a
vowel. Examples: houl, how,
coward, boil, boy, voyij. In words derived from a word
ending in ow or oy, the spelling is kept even if followed by a
consonant, as in cowboy and joyfûl. These
diphthongs are marked as stressed in the same way as short vowels, with
a dieresis over the o, as in anöyans
or devöut.

Arbdot also uses the letters â, ê, ô and
û. ô and û are the vowels of <law> and
<push> respectively. êr represents the stressed vowel
of <bird>. (Note that an unstressed -er sound may be
spelled with any vowel letter, as in bêrglar,
mêrder, mârtir, kêrsor and mêrmur.) â is
the "broad a", discussed later when international aspects are
considered. Note
that the circumflexed letters are used whether or not the vowel is
stressed, but that unstressed cases are rare.

International issues

It is intended that Arbdot be useful for spelling either British or
American English. In most cases, the same spelling is used for
both varieties of English - since there are more vowels in British
English than in American, this necessitates some non-phonemic
spellings. For some words for which identical spellings are not
practical, the spellings will differ only in diacritics. For
instance, there are many words like <bath> and <cross>,
spelled batþ and krôs in American Arbdot, but bâtþ and kros in British Arbdot. There
are, of course, words whose pronunciations are different enough that
there is no choice but to have two spellings, such as <schedule>
and <lieutenant>: skejùl
and lùtënant for
Americans, shedyùl and
leftënant for Britons.

The following chart is an easy-to-read summary of the rules
discussed after it. Note that the chart is a generalization, and
that some Americans and
Britons will use substantially different pronunciations from the ones
shown.

American
sounds

British
sounds

Sample
words

Arbdot
spelling

TS rule of thumb

/A:/

/A:/
/Q/

father
bother

fâther
bother

spelled a
spelled o (or a after w, qu)

/Er/

/E(r)/
/{(r)/
/e@(r)/

Jerry
Larry
Mary

Jerè
Larè
Márè

spelled er or err
spelled ar or arrspelled air, ar, ear or eir

/Ir/

/I(r)/
/I@(r)/

delirious
serious

delïrèus
sérèus

spelled ir, irr or yr
spelled ear, eer, er or ier

/Or/
/Or/
/A:r/

/O(r)/
/Q(r)/
/Qr/

chorus
forest
sorrow

côrusfôrest (Am), forest (Br)sorò

None (ôr when
final
or before a consonant)

/Ur/

/Ur/
/U@(r)/

courier
curious

cûrèer
kyúrèus

None (ûr is
uncommon)

/3`/

/Vr/
/3(r)/

hurry
herd

hurè
hêrd

spelled urr or our
others (also blurry, furry)

/ju:/
/u:/
/u:/

/ju:/
/ju:/
/u:/

few
new
crew

fyú
neú
krú

None

/i/

/I/

happy

hapè

Spelled -y (at word
end)
or i (before vowel)

â versus o

For Americans, the words <father> and <bother>
rhyme. For Britons, they do not. Arbdot uses the letter
â for the sound of <father> (the "broad a") and o for the
sound of <bother>. Americans should use the letter â
when the corresponding British sound is the broad a and otherwise
o. In most cases, the following rule can be used. Spell
using the same letter as the traditional spelling, except when a
follows a w (or qu), in which case the o spelling is used. Thus: fâther, bother, drâma, Dona,
bârk, borò, Woshiñton, skwosh.

The r vowels

The most difficult area in devising a spelling system
which is workable for both British and American use is the handling of
the consonant r, and the vowels which precede it.

The first area of difficulty is the fact that most
speakers of British English are non-rhotic, that is, they do not
pronounce many of the r's in
traditional spelling, particularly preceding a
consonant, or at the ends of words. This is a problem which
current English spelling solves quite well - r's which are not
pronounced are included in the spelling, and the rules for when they
are silent are so regular that this gives the average British reader
little trouble. The same solution is adopted by Arbdot.

More serious is the fact that RP, the prestige British
dialect, uses three diphthongs before r which do not occur in American
English, and makes other distinctions in vowels before r that Americans
tend to find surprising.

A quick summary of the difficulties is as follows:

The combination -or- before a vowel is often
pronounced with a short
o rather than with the aw sound that is almost
always used in
American English. <forest> and
<sorest> do not rhyme in
RP.

The words <furry> and <hurry> do not rhyme
in RP. <hurry> is pronounced with the
short u sound of <pup>, a sound which does not occur
before r in most Americans' English.

The words <clearer> and <mirror> do not
rhyme in RP.

The first vowels of <courier> and
<curious> are different in RP. Most words with the
<courier> sound in American English use the <curious>
diphthong in RP. Words like <courier> and <guru>,
which Americans and Britons pronounce the same (except for the final r
of <courier>), are exceptional.

Each of the names <Mary>, <Larry> and
<Jerry> has a different first vowel in RP. This occurs in
American English as well, but the majority of Americans pronounce all
three with the same vowel.

Here is how these situations are handled in Arbdot.

This case is no different from words like
<cross>,
spelled krôs by
Americans
and kros by Britons.
<forest> and
<sorest> will be fôrest
and sôrest in American
Arbdot, but forest
and sôrest in British
Arbdot.

Since there is already a symbol in Arbdot for the
short u,
this case presents no problems. The Arbdot spelling -ur- is used
for words
like
<hurry> which are pronounced with ur in RP. In general,
these
are words traditionally spelled with -urr- (except for <furry>
and <blurry>), and words spelled with -our- where the American
pronunciation is êr, like <nourish> and <courage>
(Arbdot nurish and curaj).

<clearer> and <mirror> are spelled as klérer and miror respectively, in
both American and British Arbdot. The vowel of
<clear> in RP is represented as a long e, even though technically
it is a diphthong rather than a pure sound. This is easy to
master for
current English readers - this sound is spelled ir/ïr in Arbdot
when
the traditional spelling is ir or irr, and ér/èr when the
traditional
spelling is ear, eer, er or ier.

The situation with <courier> and <curious>
is
very similar to the above. <courier> is spelled cûrèer, while
<curious> is spelled as kyúrèus,
representing the RP diphthong as
a long u. The úr/ùr spelling is the usual one, as
there are only a
handful of words with the other pronunciation.

The situation with <Mary>, <Larry> and
<Jerry> is the most complicated, as there are three sounds
involved. These names are spelled Márè, Larè and
Jerè respectively
in
Arbdot. Parallel to the handling of the diphthongs of items 3 and
4 above, the diphthong of the RP <Mary>
is
represented as a long a, even though it is not strictly the same
sound. The sound of <Larry> is a short a followed by an r,
and
is thus represented that way, and similarly, the vowel of <Jerry>
is a short e, and so represented. As with
<clearer>/<mirror>, there is a simple traditional spelling
rule for the <Mary> and <Jerry> sounds: if the spelling is
er or err, the sound is that of <Jerry>, and if the spelling is
air, ear or eir, the sound is that of <Mary>. Also, the
spelling
arr represents the <Larry> sound. The problem is the
combination
ar, which can represent either the <Mary> sound or the
<Larry> sound (as in <mascara>). I have found no
useful
rule for dealing with this case (other than that the suffix
<-arity> is usually the <Larry> sound). The only
alternative here for Americans who do not make this distinction seems
to be memorizing the words that contain the <Larry> sound.

ú versus yú versus eú

A final distinction between British and American English
is found in many words containing a long u. In both varieties of
English, many words, like <few>, precede the vowel sound with a y
(Arbdot spelling fyú),
while many other words, such as crew (Arbdot spelling krú) do not. However,
there is a third class of words, of which <new> is an example, in
which the y occurs in British English, but not in majority American
English.

It would of course be possible to spell such words
differently in British and American Arbdot (nyú and nú), but this does not have
the simple appeal that the two spellings of <bath> (batþ and bâtþ) have. My
solution is instead to use the combination eú/eù for this
particular situation, so that <new> is spelled neú. This solution
favors neither British nor American English - the eú words are
exceptions for both varieties.

This notation of a leading e can also be used before the
vowels û and u (when it represents a schwa), as in penïnseula and teûbêrkyulósis.

Spelling -y

The pronunciation of the final -y of <happy> varies considerably
between English dialects. For most Americans, it is clearly a
brief form of long e /i/, while for most RP speakers it is closer to
short i /I/. As David Barrow has explained on the Saundspel group,
in British English, there is a true length distinction between the two
vowels of <needy>, whereas for an American, only the stress is
different. This vowel appears at the ends of words, where it is
spelled y (or sometimes ie, as in <cookie>), or before other
vowels, where it is generally i (or sometimes e, as in
<video>). Arbdot represents this vowel with è,
according to the American pronunciation. There are a few cases
where this can lead to confusion, as with <booty> and
<bootee>, which are pronounced differently in RP, but both
likely to be spelled bútè
in
Arbdot. Unfortunately, spelling this sound with i is no better,
as then the distinct words <candid> and <candied> both end
up spelled candid. I've
been debating for some time now whether and how Arbdot should be
changed to better represent the y vowel. Here are the three
options that I've considered. I am still not 100 % satisfied with
my current decision here.

The first option is simply to keep using è for
the y sound. The advantage of doing so is to preserve the
resemblance to Bobdot, which I consider to be of some importance.
David Barrow (one of the Saundspel
regulars) says he believes the notation is not intolerable to RP
speakers, but suggests certain minor changes which are discussed below.

The second option is to use the letter y with a
diacritic for the y vowel. The ý and ÿ forms would
represent stressed vowels, and so are clearly unsuitable. The
form ỳ, which implies a long vowel sound, would work for American
English, but not for RP. And thus we are led inexorably to ŷ as
the appropriate form: hapŷ,
rádŷò. This would be the standout choice,
but for one problem. The ŷ is not in the Latin-1 character set,
which makes it difficult to input, or to read using popular E-mail
programs. Your browser can (probably) handle it, but not all
human communication takes place on the Web (at least, not yet!).

A final possibility here is to mimic traditional
spelling, by using an unmarked y where it is unambiguous, at the end of
a word or before a consonant, or an unmarked i before a vowel.
This gives us the comfortable spellings hapy and rádiò. Having
two spellings for the same sound is not ideal, but nothing new, as
using c as well as k for the k sound is an established part of
Bobdot/Arbdot.

Here is a brief sample of text spelled in each of the
three ways. (The text is the chorus of the Bob Dylan song "Too
Much of Nothing".)

For the moment, I'm sticking with option 1. There
are a few cases where this causes trouble for RP speakers. One is
the pair of <booty/bootee>, mentioned above. Other problems
are the words <babies> and <bases> (plural of
<basis>), or <Harvey> and <larvae>, which rhyme in
American English, but not in RP. David has suggested that Arbdot
should use é rather than è for the occasional words like
<bootie> and <bases> where an unstressed long e is used in
RP, in essence reserving è for the y sound. This seems
reasonable to me: using an slightly unphonemic spelling for búté and báséz and lârvé and 20 or so
other words of the same sort seems to me to be a small price to pay for
RP compatability, and one Americans can easily live with.

Examples

Here are my usual two text examples in Arbdot. First
is the opening paragraph of H.G. Wells' "The Star". A Bobdot
version for comparison can be found on my page of Star transcriptions.

It wuz on the fêrst
dá ov the neú yér that the anöunsment wuz
mád, ôlmóst
símultánèuslè frum tþré
obzêrvatôrèz, that the móshon ov the planet
Nëpteún, the outermóst ov ôl the planetz that
whél aböut the Sun, had becüm verè erätik.
A rétârdáshon in its velösitè had bin
suspëkted in Desëmber. Then, a fánt, remót spek
ov lít wuz discüverd in the réjon ov the
pertêrbd planet. At fêrst this did not côz enè
verè grát eksítment. Síentïfik
pépul, however, found the intëlijens remârkabul
enüf, éven befôr it becám nón that the
neú bodè wuz rapidlè gróing lârjer
and bríter, and that its móshon wuz kwít diferent
frum the ôrderlè progres ov the planetz.

Theabove
represents American Arbdot. A British version would differ in a
few words, notably woz rather
than wuz, obzêrvatrèz
rather than obzêrvatôrèz,
bén rather than bin, and prógres rather than progres.

My other favorite example, the lyrics of the Dire Straits
song "Industrial Disease" (words and music by Mark Knopfler), is
represented in Arbdot as follows. (Dire Straits was a British
group, so this is British Arbdot, to the best of my ability. The
differences from American Arbdot are quite unobtrusive. Except
for the spellings of woz and yôr, they are rather hard to
notice.)

Wôrning
lítz âr flashing doun at Kwolitè ContrólSumbodè
tþrú a spaner and thá tþrú him in the
hólThár'z rúmorz
in the lóding bá and añger in the tounSumbodè blú a
whisul and the wôlz cám dounThár'z a méting
in the bôrdrúm, the'r tríing tu trás the smelThár'z léking
in the woshrúm, thár'z a snék in
PêrsonëlSumwhár in the
coridor, sumwun woz hêrd tu snéz"Gûdnes mé,
cûd this bé Indüstrèal Dizéz?"